Conan Character Contest Winners

Thank you to all of those who entered in our Conan Savage Worlds character creation contest.

We wanted to try something new and let others create the characters for our next Roleplay Drama and by conducting this contest, we committed to doing just that. One of the first questions asked among the cast was, “what if we only get a few submissions, and they suck?”

Well, that scenario didn’t have to be played out because not only did we get way more submissions than we thought but none of them sucked! That is not to say that some were not stronger than others, but all-in-all, they were very good.

There were so many great characters it is a shame that we could only choose six. But that was a term of the contest, so we did. Each character was chosen by the person who will portray them on mic and the selections were based on the personal interests of the players and the need of the group as a whole. Unfortunately, that means that an individually awesome character could have been passed over.

It was decided that it would be a shame to waste some of the really good characters, so Eric may use them as NPCs in the production… maybe even adversaries. So if your character was not chosen to be a PC, you still may have had some input on the game.

So without further ado, here are the winners of the Openly Gamer Conan Savage Worlds Character Contest:

The Grand Prize Winner is:

Congratulations Brian! Valacious is a very unique guy and we can only hope that Mark can do him justice.

And he even gets a badass picture, awesome! Mark I actually had you in mind for this guy as we have similar playstyle. He is 100% yours and I can’t wait to see what you make of him. I also absolve myself of any and all damage he may do to the campaign from this point forward. This looks like a killer party makeup, and I hope you all have enormous amounts of fun before the GM’s already planned TPK. 🙂

Awesome! That’s a fantastic picture of Loviisa too, though she’s a wee bit too pretty. I imagined her a bit more Brienne of Tarth-ish, though I’m not complaining about that photo at all. 🙂

Really surprised (and pleased) that I won as A) I don’t care for Savage Worlds, and B) I didn’t have time to finish my other entries, both of which I thought were more interesting than Loviisa. One was a typical Howardian temptress; a Brythunian slave girl with _no_ combat skills at all but a Charisma of 8 (yes, 8) and all the social skills ever. The other was a female Turanian fire-prophet of Erlik, who was so devout she wore a khalat. She was essentially a “fantasy Muslim”, complete with the full-on burqa (only here eyes were visible) and a host of religious rules to adhere to.

Are you guys going to post up the stats of the characters, or mention them in the Roleplay Drama? I’m interested to see what other people did.

Sorry to butt in, but I agree that Howard’s descriptions of women are pulp fiction at its pulpiest! For instance, Belit from the Queen of the Black coast:

“She was slender, yet formed like a goddess: at once lithe and voluptuous. Her only garment was a broad silken girdle. Her white ivory limbs and the ivory globes of her breasts drove a beat of fierce passion through the Cimmerian’s pulse, even in the panting fury of battle. Her rich black hair, black as a Stygian night, fell in rippling burnished clusters down her supple back. Her dark eyes burned on the Cimmerian.”

You’re absolutely right, Elderman. Howard _can’t_ write women without describing how beautiful they are. Plus, they all have _exactly_ the same personality; dismissive of men, chaste, and “strong willed”. Right up until they cross paths with Conan. Then they get all confused and stupid by the “unbidden thoughts of lust” the young Cimmerian riles up them, and they turn into petulant, stubborn children. It gets pretty darn tiresome if you read a bunch of Conan stories back to back.

Robert Jordan is even worse. In his Conan stories, absolutely _every_ description of a female character has to use the adjectives “lush”, “full”, “rounded”, “soft” or something similar for every body part. Which he describes in precise detail. The pretenses for his women to have their clothes ripped off are about as flimsy as the garments they wear in the few scenes they’re _not_ naked. It got pretty ridiculous. Where Howard’s stories are heroic adventure with just a hint of the erotic, Jordan’s stories are full on erotic fantasy with a splash of adventure. It gets to be a bit much.

Whether it be his depiction of women or his racial views, seeing Howard through a 21st century lens is doing him an injustice. Howard knew his audience, based on what sold. I (Eric) equate it to comic books nowadays. How many comic book women (or men for that matter) are fat slags? That is because of the target audience. I read in a biography of Howard that he was actually told by editors that some of his work didn’t have enough sex. Oddly enough the same book stated that some of the letters to the editor of Weird Tales were from women who found Conan barbarically romantic.

It’s great that you guys liked Odored although, I actually thought that Tomar was the stronger of the two. Odored looks a bit different to how I envisaged him in your picture though. I had pictured a pock marked and sunken eyed version of Adrian Brody doing the whole Daniel Day Lewis/Hawkeye thing. I look forward to ‘Tower of the Ape’.

Tomar is a very strong character (no pun intended). Don’t be too surprised if he pops up as an NPC.

As for the picture, Eric stated that he wanted to follow Howard’s vision of the Picts, being traditionally inspired rather than the more modern native American pastiche. So the image was used from the film The Eagle.

Jayson stated that the character reminded him of Liver-eating Johnson (the inspiration for Jerimah Johnson).

I was never sure about that part of the imagery in ‘The Eagle’. I actually thought that the director was riffing on Howard’s interpretation of the Picts from Wolves beyond the Border rather than the historical ones. Still, Odored does look cool……..

I now wish that I had submitted my third concept. Another somewhat villainous type. I tend to gravitate towards amoral characters in the Hyborian Age……

We will announce the dates on Twitter and Facebook when they get close. For a rough estimate, we are planning on primary recording in early March. Our estimate for the first finished episode release being early-mid June (judging by our previous production’s record-release schedule).

Eric is working on the content of the Obsidian Portal page now and we will announce when it is up soon.

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